Uprising: Ines Vansteenkiste-Muylle’s Evolving Relationship With the Camera
It takes an artistically minded child to arrange and rearrange a Barbie dollhouse several times, each time trying to make it that little bit more appealing. For Ines Vansteenkiste-Muylle, her very own dollhouse was carefully crafted by her interior architect father, and grandfather, who rubbed their creative genes off on her.
“The first 12 years of my life I grew up as an only child, so I always found creative ways to keep myself busy,” Ines explains. “My father is an interior architect and when I was young, he used to paint a lot. It inspired me for sure to get creative myself,” and this included dressing her Barbie dolls up and becoming engrossed in the miniature fashion styles that came with it.
“When I was nine or so I started my collaging books where I cut out all the fashion images of magazines and made collages. At that time, I was convinced I was doing that to be a fashion designer,” she says. While she was only 10 at the time when she thought this, the sentiment transpired into fashion photography and eventually led to her career in both photography and directing, taking her across her native Belgium and the bustling hub of Amsterdam.
It was crafts and creativity that stuck with Ines, despite trying her hand at everything from drawing to painting, making collages and more. “The only hobby that I did from kid to 18 years old was art academy on Friday night, all the other hobbies came and went very fast.”
[Zalando campaign]
As she grew, her mother’s work also started to weave its way into her consciousness, and as someone who supports cancer patients in various ways, Ines explains, “She lit the human interest and socially engaged fire in me.” Hearing that, the combination of human science and fashion photography amalgamated into “a mix of documentary, fashion, and socially engaged photography and film,” on Ines’ end.
Developing her craft began with a master's in photography at the Luca School of Arts in Brussels. After four long years of honing her craft, she began developing the style she leans on today. “A lot of people stopped because developing a style is not easy, sometimes teachers could be very harsh on us. But I feel I needed those setbacks to be armed against the creative business where I’m in now.”
It was during her degree that she met a fellow creative from the Dutch newspaper ‘De Volkskrant’ who first told her about becoming a freelancer, and offered her an opportunity to join the publication later down the line. “They could welcome me the following year, so I did another master's degree in teaching, while already working as a student freelancer in the creative industry and after that, I moved to Amsterdam to be a paid intern as a freelance photographer for De Volkskrant.”
Ines’ determination proved vital especially because, as she recalls her younger days, “In those times it was already hard enough to find a female photographer as an example.”
While she always wanted to become a photographer, and got signed to BEING when they saw her master's project, it was directing which wasn’t quite part of the plan. “I loved moving images and I met DOP Kamiel Doens when I was doing my second master’s. At that time I did a lot of fashion editorial projects in photography and he wanted to do more fashion so we started a project ‘What Love Means’ together with stylist Kate Housh.”
[Brussels Airways - director's cut]
She continues, “I was very naïve at the time and made the project bigger and bigger because I was inspired by a poem Madonna Lenaerts wrote about what love meant to them. Without knowing how much money I needed to make a video project, I wrote a whole script. In the end, Enfnts Terribles [magazine] helped us to get a bit of sponsorship from Zalando, and Zalando loved it so much that I did another job for them and one after the other job came as a director.”
Having picked up her first camera at age eight, it was through a combination of her passion for creating and her education which made her understand how to capture from behind the lens. “Directing came very naturally to me as I already had my style in photography. I knew a lot of inspiration because I chose film history as an elective. But I have a lot of mentors who taught me a lot about the technical aspects of writing a script, a shortlist and what works best in an edit for example. “
Ines credits the team at Mercator.tv, the DOP of her directing debut Kamiel Doens and editor Nick Read, as well a BEING as people who helped her navigate that first experience and translate her “creative vision to something technically beautiful.” This project, ‘What Love Means’ became the first award winning project she created, and led to lots of commercial opportunities going forward.
In terms of her working style, Ines celebrates and appreciates the freedom of being a freelancer. She recalls that not taking a fixed job as a creative was one of the best things she did for herself, “To see your self-worth and ask enough money for commercial jobs, and to put your own money into creative projects where you make all choices for yourself and not for a client. You really need to be creative.”
While there are always ideas and projects she has running through her mind, Ines believes that creative outbursts and busy periods should also come with breaks and time to slow down. “I would love to achieve a place where I can only choose projects that touch people or have the ability to change something in the world. There’s nothing better than making a commercial with a beautiful message or something we can believe in as people.”
She adds, “I love it when moving images tell the stories of how unique and beautiful we can be as humans,” and mentions the Nike brand as an example of this kind of storytelling.
[Unlearn x Sicky - Rocky]
Ines’ listening diet consists of podcasts from various industries, including the BBC’s ‘My Non-Binary Life’ and ‘Seeing White’ by Scene on Radio, as well as ‘Artists in Residence’ which also inspired her.
While in her own work, she has a love of all things film and would love more of those projects to come her way. “I’m a bit of a film lover since I shoot almost everything analogue for my photography. A lot of my references are shot on film as well. It just gives an extra dimension to the project so when I see whole movies shot on film it shows me so much love.”
She’d also like to see brands take more risks within their work, to not only be more reflective of the global market but also to push the boat out creatively – not to mention, putting the budget behind the idea. “I feel that we’re not even close to decent inclusion in this industry. Everyone wants to keep everyone happy and avoid the hard conversations but, in my experience, change never comes with an easy conversation.”
Ines continues, “Just let people of colour, non-binary people, or women be main characters. There will always be people who do not agree with something, but if it means that a young kid feels represented when she sits to watch a movie is already enough to take the leap, no?”
Fiona Jane Burgess is someone she respects when looking through the lens of inclusion, but also for the fact that her work is visually appealing. “First, she’s a mother who talks about this openly and speaks about what could be better for mothers in this industry. Second, her work always feels very close to herself. It’s very female and it fights for female rights which I really love. I believe that a lot of her work is shot on film, which is very beautiful.”
Having grown up with TMF and MTV music videos, it’s no surprise that Ines also takes her inspiration from the likes of those mediums. “We used to film our own music videos with the cam recorder my mom used to own,” she recalls. Hearing this, it’s no surprise that with her eye for visual mediums, David Lunch, Wes Anderson and Jean Luc Godard inspire her – she mentions the weirdness of Lynch’s style, the visual language that Anderson captures and the banality in life from Godard.
When she isn’t watching movie masterpieces, you’ll also find Ines philosophising with her friends, jamming to techno, eating good food and drinking natural wines. “I love a good cinema evening and I love thinking creatively about everything. Creating images is what I always loved and always will do.”
She’s currently working on her first fictional short movie, exploring the anxiety which women and non-binary people can often feel in the vulnerable instances where they’re followed at night. She explains, “It will still contain my personal style but in a fictional way and with an important message.”
With that in mind, Ines’ motivating goal with her work boils down to one overarching sentiment, which anchors her craft, “Feeling a connection with people and making a little difference in some people’s lives by creating images they can connect to.”
